There is an increasing demand for access to message accounts such as email accounts from remote locations, for example, when a person needs to work from a location outside their usual office. Such, “roadwarriors” who travel frequently and need to work at different sites, need access to their email, voice mail and other messaging facilities from those different sites. Until now, this has typically been achieved by connecting a laptop computer, personal digital assistant or the like, to a public switched telephone network (PSTN) and making a connection using a modem to a data network such as a company intranet or the internet.
These connections from a PSTN to a data network using a modem are typically made using remote access service (RAS). RAS enables users of time division multiplex (TDM) communications networks such as public switch telephone networks (PSTN) to connect via a modem to an internet protocol communications network such as a corporate intranet or internet service provider. A RAS gateway acts as a translator between communications from the TDM network and the associated internet protocol communications network. For example, an end user may use a remote access service in order to access the internet from his or her home computer using a modem. The modem is used to make a dial up connection over the public telephone network to a RAS gateway and from there to the internet. Data is then sent over this path which includes the “voice” network or public telephone network.
A particular problem arises for users who have several different types of messaging accounts, especially “roadwarriors” who travel frequently and need to access their messaging accounts from remote locations. For example, a particular user may have a Microsoft Exchange (trade mark) email account, a Lotus Notes (trade mark) email account and a Novell Groupwise (trade mark) email account. In order to access those different email accounts the user has a laptop computer, personal computer or other suitable terminal which has three desktop applications, one for accessing each type of email account. However, it is not possible for the user to access all of his or her email accounts simultaneously. Instead, the user must connect, for example, using a RAS connection, to one of the email accounts and then terminate that RAS connection before initiating a new RAS connection to the next type of email account. This is time consuming and problematic for users, particularly those who travel frequently. For users within an office who are able to connect directly to the office's intranet, it is still necessary to connect to each email account in turn and this is still time consuming and frustrating for the user, even though it is not necessary to make RAS connections. Another problem is that the user must maintain software applications on his or her terminal, one for each of the different types of message account. This takes up valuable memory and processing capacity on the user terminal.
Another problem is that when a user accesses a particular message account, access to the account is often slow and significant amounts of bandwidth are taken up in transferring data from the account to the user's PC or other terminal.
An object of the present invention is to provide a method and apparatus for providing access to a plurality of message accounts from a single web-based interface which overcomes or at least mitigates one or more of the problems noted above.
Further benefits and advantages of the invention will become apparent from a consideration of the following detailed description given with reference to the accompanying drawings, which specify and show preferred embodiments of the invention.